near to Glasgow, Great Britain

As explained in the item on the NS6065 : Bridge of Sighs, the first burial within the Necropolis took place before it was formally opened.

As explained by Susan Milligan in "The Merchants House of Glasgow (1605-2005)", "the first burial had already taken place, in September 1832, of a Jew, Joseph Levi ..., the Synagogue having purchased a small area of the park as a burial ground. ... This was the first Jewish cemetery in Glasgow: the tiny Jewish community had to go to Edinburgh to bury their dead before that date. The Merchants House paid for an ornamental gateway and pillar at the entrance for the Jews' burial ground".

The pillar and ornamental gate are shown in the present photo. The Hebrew letters near the top of the pillar are מכבי (r-l: mem kaph beth yodh).

Further down, above the base, are the words "Leave thy fatherless children. I will preserve them alive, and let thy widows trust in me" (KJ Jeremiah 49:11). The base itself bears a poem, now partly worn away: Byron's "Oh! Weep for Those".

The two posts of the ornamental gate just to the right of the pillar also bear text; the inscriptions are a little long to reproduce here, but they correspond to the King James rendering of (on the left post) Jeremiah 31:15-17 (which is the passage about Rachel weeping for her children), and (on the right post) Lamentations 2:1 and 3:31-33.

The Necropolis is 37 acres in extent, and was formally opened in 1833. Like the Père Lachaise in Paris, it was laid out as a garden cemetery. In 1966, its ownership was transferred from the Merchants House of Glasgow to what is now Glasgow City Council. See Link for further information.

This photo is linked from:

Discussion on NS6065

NS6065 : GirlsNS6065 : InfantsThese red sandstone gateways once led into Townhead Primary School (now demolished and replaced by a council car park). The school stood on Rotten Row, just west of the former "Red Barony" Church, and the building was still there in 1964 at least.Presumably the move of people from central Glasgow to peripheral estates and new towns (aka "overspill"), plus the demolition of substandard tenements, led in turn to the closure and subsequent demolition of the Townhead School.